Jobini

My Journey of Breaking into Big Tech (Or How I Ended up Joining Microsoft)

DevOps is a bunch of practices that consolidate programming advancement (Dev) and IT tasks (Operations) to work on the speed, quality, and dependability of programming conveyance. DevOps expects to stall the storehouses among advancement and task groups and make a culture of coordinated effort, mechanization, and persistent improvement. One of the vital standards of DevOps is mechanization. Via robotizing monotonous assignments like testing, constructing, and conveying code, DevOps groups can lessen mistakes, increment productivity, and speed up the product conveyance process. Mechanization additionally permits groups to zero in on more elevated-level assignments like development and client esteem. One more significant standard of DevOps is constant incorporation and consistent conveyance (CI/Compact disc). CI/Disc is a bunch of practices that robotize the method involved with building, testing, and sending code changes. By constantly coordinating code changes and conveying them to creation in little, gradual advances, DevOps groups can decrease the gamble of mistakes and work on the speed and unwavering quality of programming conveyance. DevOps additionally stresses the significance of checking and input. By checking the exhibition and strength of utilizations and frameworks, DevOps groups can rapidly recognize and determine issues before they influence clients. Input circles likewise permit groups to consistently work on their cycles and items in light of client criticism and information. Notwithstanding specialized rehearses, DevOps likewise underscores the significance of culture and joint effort. By encouraging a culture of trust, correspondence, and shared liability, DevOps groups can separate storehouses and work together to accomplish shared objectives. Coordinated effort likewise permits groups to use assorted points of view and the ability to take care of perplexing issues and drive advancement. Generally, DevOps is a strong way to deal with programming improvement and conveyance that underlines robotization, persistent improvement, and coordinated effort. By taking on DevOps rehearses, groups can speed up the conveyance of great programming and further develop the general client experience. Here Are a Few Prescribed Procedures for Carrying Out DevOps in an Association: Begin with a reasonable vision: Prior to executing DevOps, it's critical to have an unmistakable vision of what you need to accomplish. This incorporates characterizing your objectives, recognizing the key partners, and laying out a guide for execution. Encourage a culture of joint effort: DevOps is tied in with separating storehouses and cultivating cooperation among improvement and task groups. This requires a culture of trust, correspondence, and shared liability. Robotize everything: Mechanization is a vital standard of DevOps. Via robotizing, dull undertakings like testing, assembling, and sending code, groups can diminish mistakes, increment productivity, and speed up the product conveyance process. Execute constant combination and consistent conveyance (CI/Disc): CI/Cd is a bunch of practices that computerize the most common way of building, testing, and sending code changes. By ceaselessly coordinating code changes and conveying them to creation in little, gradual advances, groups can lessen the gamble of mistakes and work on the speed and dependability of programming conveyance. Screen and measure everything: Observing and estimating the exhibition and soundness of utilizations and foundation is basic to recognizing and settling issues before they influence clients. This requires a vigorous checking and logging methodology, as well as a culture of consistent improvement. Embrace cloud-local advancements: Cloud-local innovations like holders, microservices, and serverless figuring are intended to help Devotionals rehearses. By embracing these advancements, groups can accomplish more noteworthy versatility, adaptability, and proficiency. Put resources into preparing and training: DevOps requires a better approach to working, which can be trying for certain groups. Putting resources into preparing and training can assist groups with fostering the abilities and information they need to prevail in a DevOps climate. Constantly get to the next level: DevOps is about ceaseless improvement. By consistently investigating and refining your cycles, devices, and practices, you can guarantee that you are continuously conveying the most ideal worth to your clients. Ceaselessly move along: DevOps is about constant improvement. By routinely surveying and refining your cycles, instruments, and practices, you can guarantee that you are continuously conveying the most ideal worth to your clients. These are only a couple of the many prescribed procedures for executing DevOps in an association. The key is to begin little, repeat rapidly, and constantly work on it after some time. By embracing these advances, groups can accomplish more noteworthy adaptability, adaptability, and proficiency. Here Are a Few Prescribed Procedures for Executing Compartment Organization With Kubernetes: Utilize revelatory setup: Kubernetes utilizes decisive design to oversee containerized applications. This implies that you characterize the ideal condition of your application, and Kubernetes deals with ensuring that the genuine state matches the ideal state. Utilize revelatory setup to characterize your application's arrangement, administration, and different assets. Use namespaces: Namespaces are a method for dividing assets in a Kubernetes bunch. Use namespaces to sort out your assets by group, climate, or application. This can assist you with overseeing access control, asset quantities, and different parts of your group. Use marks and selectors: Names and selectors are a strong method for coordinating and dealing with your Kubernetes assets. Use names to append metadata to your assets, and use selectors to question and gather assets in light of their marks. Use availability and liveness tests: Status and liveness tests are utilized to actually look at the strength of your application. Use preparation tests to demonstrate when your application is prepared to get traffic, and use liveness tests to show when your application is as yet running accurately. Utilize flat case autoscaling (HPA): HPA is a Kubernetes highlight that naturally scales the quantity of units in an organization in view of asset use. Use HPA to increase your application or down in light of interest consequently. Utilize stateful sets for stateful applications: Stateful sets are a Kubernetes include that gives steady, interesting organization personalities for stateful applications like data sets. Utilize stateful sets to oversee stateful applications in a Kubernetes bunch. Use privileged insights and config maps: Insider facts and config maps are Kubernetes assets that permit you to oversee delicate data like passwords and Programming interface keys. Use insider facts and config guides to store and oversee setup information for your applications. Utilize a holder vault: A compartment library is a focal storehouse for putting away and circulating compartment pictures. Utilize a holder vault to store your application's compartment pictures, and use Kubernetes to send and deal with those pictures in your bunch. These are only a couple of the many prescribed procedures for carrying out holder organization with Kubernetes. The key is to begin little, emphasize rapidly, and constantly further develop your Kubernetes rehearses after some time. Here Are a Few Prescribed Procedures for Carrying Out Nonstop Combination and Ceaseless Conveyance (CI/Compact Disc) In a DevOps Climate: Robotize everything: Computerization is a critical guideline of DevOps, and it's particularly significant with regard to CI/Cd. Mechanize as a large part of the form, test, and organization process as conceivable to lessen blunders, increment proficiency, and speed up the product conveyance process. Use form control: Adaptation control is basic to effective CI/Album. Utilize a form control framework like Git to deal with your code changes, and utilize expanding and consolidating systems to oversee equal improvement endeavors. Utilize a form server: A form server like Jenkins or Travis CI can mechanize the method involved with building and testing your code changes. Utilize a form server to naturally fabricate and test your code changes at whatever point a new commit is pushed to your variant control framework. Utilize persistent incorporation: Constant joining is a training that includes coordinating code changes into a common vault habitually, frequently a few times each day. Utilize constant incorporation to get mistakes early, diminish blend clashes, and further develop joint efforts between engineers. Utilize ceaseless conveyance: Consistent conveyance is a training that includes consequently sending code changes to creation-like conditions at whatever point a new commit is pushed to your form control framework. Utilize ceaseless conveyance to decrease the gamble of blunders and work on the speed and dependability of programming conveyance. Use foundation as code: Framework as code (IaC) is a training that includes overseeing foundation utilizing code. Use IaC instruments like Terraform or CloudFormation to mechanize the most common way of provisioning and overseeing foundation, and to guarantee that your framework is reliable and reproducible. Use testing and observing: Testing and checking are basic to effective CI/Disc. Utilize mechanized testing instruments like Selenium or JUnit to test your code changes, and use checking devices like Prometheus or Grafana to screen the exhibition and soundness of your applications and foundation. Use input circles: Criticism circles are basic to ceaseless improvement. Use criticism circles to assemble input from clients, partners, and different groups, and utilize that input to work on your cycles and items constantly. These are only a couple of the many prescribed procedures for carrying out CI/Disc in a DevOps climate. The key is to begin little, emphasize rapidly, and persistently work on your CI/Cd practices over the long haul. There Are Many Instruments Accessible for Carrying Out CI/CD in a DevOps Climate. Here Are a Few Well-Known Ones: Jenkins: Jenkins is an open-source computerization server that is broadly utilized for CI/Compact disc. It upholds an extensive variety of modules and incorporations, making it profoundly adaptable and adaptable. Travis CI: Travis CI is a cloud-based CI/Disc stage that is famous with open-source projects. It upholds many programming dialects and structures and is not difficult to set up and utilize. CircleCI: CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD stage that is famous with new companies and little groups. It upholds many programming dialects and systems and is profoundly adaptable and adaptable. GitLab CI/Compact disc: GitLab CI/Cd is an implicit CI/Cd stage that is important for the GitLab code, the executive’s stage. It upholds a great many programming dialects and systems and is profoundly incorporated with GitLab's different elements. Bamboo: Bamboo is a CI/Disc stage from Atlassian, the producers of Jira and Juncture. It upholds a great many programming dialects and systems and is profoundly coordinated with Atlassian's different items. TeamCity: TeamCity is a CI/Compact disc stage from JetBrains, the producers of IntelliJ Thought and other famous improvement instruments. It upholds many programming dialects and systems and is exceptionally adjustable and adaptable. Sky blue DevOps: Purplish blue DevOps is a cloud-based CI/Disc stage from Microsoft. It upholds many programming dialects and structures and is profoundly coordinated with Microsoft's different items and administrations. These are only a couple of the many devices accessible for carrying out CI/Disc in a DevOps climate. The key is to pick a device that meets your particular necessities and coordinates well with your current instruments and cycles. Here Are a Few Prescribed Procedures for Carrying Out Foundation as Code (IaC): Use variant control: Adaptation control is basic to fruitful IaC. Utilize a form control framework like Git to deal with your foundation code changes, and utilize fanning and combining systems to oversee equal improvement endeavors. Utilize a revelatory methodology: IaC is tied in with characterizing the ideal condition of your framework, as opposed to the means expected to arrive. Utilize a definitive way to deal with characterize your framework assets, and let your IaC device handle the subtleties of provisioning and dealing with those assets. Utilize a measured methodology: IaC can immediately become perplexing and clumsy in the event that you attempt to oversee everything in a solitary record. Utilize a secluded way to deal with breaking your foundation code into more modest, reusable parts that can be effectively overseen and tried. Use testing and approval: Testing and approval are basic to fruitful IaC. Utilize computerized testing apparatuses like Terratest or KitchenCI to test your foundation code changes, and use approval devices like cfn-build up or Checkov to approve your code against best practices and security norms. Utilize a cloud-freethinker approach: IaC instruments like Terraform and CloudFormation are intended to be cloud-rationalist, implying that they can be utilized to oversee the framework across numerous cloud suppliers. Utilize a cloud-rationalist way to deal with a guarantee that your framework code is compact and can be effectively relocated between cloud suppliers. Use insider facts about the executives: Privileged insights from the board are basic to getting your framework code. Utilize privileged insights from the executives’ instruments like Vault or AWS Mysteries Director to safely store and oversee delicate data like passwords and Programming interface keys. Utilize nonstop joining and conveyance: CI/Disc is a critical standard of DevOps, and it's particularly significant with regard to IaC. Utilize a CI/Compact disc pipeline to naturally test, approve, and convey your foundation code changes, and to guarantee that your framework is generally cutting-edge and secure. These are only a couple of the many prescribed procedures for carrying out IaC. The key is to begin little, emphasize rapidly, and constantly further develop your IaC rehearses over the long run. Here Are a Few Prescribed Procedures for Carrying Out Compartment Security in a DevOps Climate: Utilize a solid base picture: Begin with a safe base picture for your compartments. Utilize a base picture that is consistently refreshed and kept up with, and that has been filtered for weaknesses. Use compartment libraries: Utilize a holder library to store and convey your compartment pictures. Holder libraries like Docker Center Point or Amazon ECR give worked-in security highlights like picture examining and access control. Use picture examining: Utilize a picture filtering apparatus like Clair or Anchore to check your compartment pictures for weaknesses and security issues. Picture checking can help you distinguish and remediate security issues before they become an issue. Use compartment detachment: Use holder disconnection highlights like namespaces and cgroups to segregate your compartments from one another and from the host framework. This can assist with forestalling holder breakouts and other security issues. Use network division: Use network division to confine your compartments from one another and from the host framework. Use devices like Kubernetes network arrangements or Istio to characterize and uphold network division rules. Use privileged insights on the board: Utilize the executive’s device like Vault or AWS Insider Facts Director to safely store and oversee delicate data like passwords and Programming interface keys. Use climate factors or Kubernetes mysteries to infuse privileged insights into your compartments at runtime. Use job-based admittance control (RBAC): Use RBAC to control admittance to your compartments and holder coordination stage. Use RBAC to characterize and uphold access control strategies for clients, groups, and applications. Use logging and observing: Use logging and checking devices like Prometheus or ELK to screen the presentation and strength of your compartments and holder arrangement stage. Use logging and checking to recognize and answer security occurrences and different issues. These are only a couple of the many prescribed procedures for executing compartment security in a DevOps climate. The key is to begin little, repeat rapidly, and ceaselessly further develop your compartment security rehearses over the long haul. Here Are a Few Prescribed Procedures for Executing Mysteries the Executives in a DevOps Climate: Utilize an insider facts-the-board device: Utilize a committed mysteries the executives instrument like HashiCorp Vault, AWS Privileged insights Director, or Purplish blue Key Vault to store and deal with your mysteries safely. These instruments give highlights like encryption, access control, and reviews to assist you with dealing with your mysteries safely. Utilize solid encryption: Utilize solid encryption to safeguard your mysteries both on the way and very still. Use encryption calculations like AES-256 and TLS to scramble your mysteries on the way, and use encryption very still to encode your insider facts when they are put away in your mysteries the board device. Use access control: Use access control to control who can get to your insider facts. Use RBAC or upper leg tendons to characterize and uphold access control arrangements for clients, groups, and applications. Use inspecting: Use examining to follow who has gotten to your insider facts and when. Use evaluating to recognize and answer security occurrences and different issues. Use robotization: Use mechanization to coordinate your mysteries the executives apparatus with your CI/Compact disc pipeline and other DevOps instruments. Use computerization to guarantee that your privileged insights are consequently infused into your applications and foundation at runtime. Use pivot: Use revolution to consistently change your privileged insights, for example, passwords and Programming interface keys. Use revolution to lessen the gamble of a compromised secret being utilized to get to your frameworks. Use forming: Use forming to follow changes to your mysteries over the long run. Use forming to guarantee that you can move back to a past variant of confidential if vital. These are only a couple of the many prescribed procedures for carrying out mysteries the board in a DevOps climate. The key is to begin little, emphasize rapidly, and constantly further develop your privileged insights the board rehearses after some time.

Smoothing Out Programming Conveyance With Consistent Joining, Persistent Conveyance, and Foundation

DAOs can be very different. Somewhere the system is built as simple as possible, somewhere - you can get lost from the first steps. Therefore, it is very important that newcomers to DAO begin their journey competently. Not everybody knows how a DAO works. So let’s make it easy for them to get started with five steps that cover the main activities for DAO members. 1. Proposals Any DAO member (i.e. anybody holding a governance token or NFT) can submit a proposal. This is the only way new initiatives can happen in a DAO and how every decision is made. A proposal can be about anything at all related to the DAO: how to spend the treasury, collaboration ideas, marketing programs, questions about the DAO’s direction, polls, election of delegates (more on that below), collective investment, and much more. Proposals are first submitted for discussion so other members can comment with their thoughts and the proposal submitted can incorporate any ideas he thinks improve the proposal before submitting it for voting. is a sample forum where proposals are submitted for discussion. If the proposal gathers enough support, it advances to the voting stage. Here What newcomers should do: In order to better understand the essence of the proposals, we advise you to study in detail the votes that are already closed or active at the moment of your entrance to the DAO. See who makes Proposals, what their standard structure is, and how this mechanism works in your particular case. Don't be afraid to pose questions to other members. Ideally, other members should walk you through the steps and introduce you to everything in detail. Voting Any member can vote on proposals. This is how decisions get made in DAOs. Once logged into your account with the wallet that has governance tokens/NFTs, you can see all the proposals up for voting (as well as the ones up for discussion and the ones already voted on). Read through the proposal carefully (look at the comments others made under the proposal for additional perspectives). Then vote as you see fit. In the most basic system, your number of tokens equals your number of votes. For specific voting settings, check with the DAO’s settings and description. What newcomers should do: Take a detailed look at the voting system used in your DAO. Remember that they can be extremely different. So your task is to investigate the voting mechanism, and then participate in it. Delegation Obviously, not everybody has the time and interest to vote in every single proposal. Some proposals may be very specific to certain areas of the DAOs operations about which many members have little expertise (technical, marketing, sales, etc.). In those cases, it may make practical sense to delegate your votes to someone else. In DAOs built with DeXe’s DAO Constructor, it also makes financial sense. What newcomers should do: Research who in your DAO is responsible for specific areas and has expertise in their business. Directly aside from activities in your organization, a person's skills can be demonstrated in other ways: for example, he or she may publish materials, speak at conferences or online. Expert Delegation To promote effective and knowledgeable decisionmaking, DAOs built on DeXe can delegate to groups of experts that are either certified as experts within your specific DAO by a vote within your DAO or are certified as global experts by DeXe itself. Experts can be categorized by subject matter. So when you want to delegate your votes on technical issues to someone, you choose the Technical Expert of your choice (or a group of them). To encourage decentralization and prevent excessive power by any single expert, DeXe’s DAOs have a mechanism to reward a plurality of experts. So giving the most popular expert all of your votes will not necessarily give you the best financial reward nor voting power. What newcomers should do: Also, as in the last point, we advise you to study in detail the experts and their activity, and then make a decision. You can do it all! Remember, this is your DAO. You are already an investor in it by holding government tokens/NFTs. You can also be a lawmaker and an employer within the DAO by submitting proposals that will spend the DAO’s budget (treasury) on programs to be completed by someone. And once a proposal sets aside a budget for something, you can be the person to do that task and get paid. For example, if someone creates a proposal for someone to create a meme, you can submit a proposal (with meme samples) to be the one chosen to do that meme and get paid for it. Or you may prove your skills so much already that a DAO proposal specifically mentions your name, service, and compensation. There could be proposals establishing contests or giveaways. And you can participate in them. You can even be an expert for your DAO or all DAOs. You can propose and then create a subDAO with a specific focus. These are just some of the roles available to members — and they are not mutually exclusive. This is the whole idea of DAOs: every member can be and do anything within the DAO as long as it’s done through proper DAO channels. Makes sense? Go try it out. Also published . here

Joining a DAO: Five Tips on How to Onboard Newcomers to Your DAO

This is by (source: ). Bush is a writer. Twitter thread Dickie Bush @dickiebush 05-02-2023 https://twitter.com/dickiebush/status/1653386840601157633?s=46&t=hLXLvA2wSOmlARX4ZS1fvA&embedable=true&thread=true The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's via the prompt "Gigantic Brain” AI Image Generator

Dickie Bush: My Experience Joining a $68,000 Mastermind

Movies and TV shows have taught us to associate computer hackers with difficult tasks, detailed plots, and elaborate schemes. What security researcher Carlos Fernández and I have recently found on open-source registries tells a different story: bad actors are favoring simplicity, effectiveness, and user-centered thinking. And to take their malicious code to the next level, they’re also adding new features assisted by ChatGPT. Just like software-as-a-service ( ), part of the reason why malware-as-a-service (MaaS) offerings such as , , and have become so popular in underground markets is that they have active customer support channels and their products tend to be slick and user-friendly. Needless to say, these products are often built by professional cybercriminals. SaaS DuckLogs Redline Stealer Racoon Stealer Check these boxes, fill out this form, click this button… Here's your ready-to-use malware sample! In the less popular MaaS offerings we’ve found in the wild, such as the token grabber , there’s an attempt to incorporate human-centered design principles, but the product fails in customer support. Mostly operated and consumed by teenagers, the associated Telegram accounts are full of complaints and hostile “bro-speak” due to a broken promise of a “lifetime warranty”: Discord Z3US Even before I joined Sonatype, I was wondering .  And now that I’m following a series of campaigns and bad actors from around the world, something has cleared up for me: most of the malicious packages the security research team brings to my attention are not the product of a quirky genius in a hoodie coding from a dark basement filled with monitors. Thanks to the simplistic nature of MaaS, anyone can easily create and upload samples to open-source registries with minimal setup cost and technical knowledge. what the modern face of cybercrime looks like malware Avast researchers that since the start of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, platforms like Discord and Telegram have become increasingly popular among the younger population. Rather than using mainstream social media, these teens create malware communities in Discord for the purpose of gaming, chatting, and socializing away from parental supervision. These communities are usually led by the most technically proficient members, who show off by taking ownership of competing servers, or even by sharing screenshots featuring information they’ve stolen from unsuspecting victims. They’re also actively seeking out other members based on their programming skills or potential to contribute to their campaigns. have observed As an unintended consequence of these activities, the resilient open-source registries we rely on are facing an overburden of resources. our security researchers confirmed as malicious a whooping 6,933 packages uploaded to the npm and PyPI registries. Last month alone We recently of a Spanish-speaking group called EsqueleSquad which has uploaded more than 5,000 packages to PyPI. The payload in these packages attempted to download a Windows Trojan from Dropbox, GitHub, and Discord by using a PowerShell command. tracked the campaign We subsequently of another group called SylexSquad, possibly from Spain, who created packages containing malware designed to exfiltrate sensitive information. In addition to advertising their products with YouTube videos and selling them on a marketplace, they have a small Discord community for recruiting new members. And they seem to have plenty of time to pollute the open-source software supply chain. investigated the activities Skidded code with a dash of AI During the first week of April, our AI system flagged a series of packages uploaded to PyPI as suspicious, later confirmed to be malicious by our security researchers. These packages had a naming pattern that consisted of the prefix “py” followed by references to antivirus software: , , , and . pydefenderultra pyjunkerpro pyanalizate pydefenderpro Carlos Fernández noticed the packages were credited to the group SylexSquad, suggesting the continuation of a campaign we had tracked before involving the packages and . After making this discovery, we started mapping their activities. reverse_shell sintaxisoyyo In a game of cat and mouse, every time we confirmed one of these packages as malicious, the PyPI team would help us take it down, and a couple of hours later, the bad actors would sneak in a similarly-named package. To give you the full picture of this campaign, let’s recap our initial findings: If developers were to install the PyPI package , would execute , a lightly obfuscated script hosted on GitHub and encoded as a series of numbers that correspond to ASCII codes. reverse_shell setup.py bypass.py After deobfuscation, it would create new registry values on Windows for persistence, and consequently, it would call another GitHub-hosted file, , an information stealer. Sensitive data such as browser information (history, cookies, passwords…), Steam accounts, Telegram accounts, credit cards, and even a screenshot of the victim’s desktop, would be uploaded using the attacker’s Discord webhook. WindowsDefender.py Fast-forward to the new packages credited to this group and we find a completely different consisting of heavily obfuscated code (AES 256 encryption) generated with , a service that promises “protection by 4 layers of algorithm”. Before Carlos rolled up his sleeves for the deobfuscation process, we could only make out two pieces of information from the ocean of camouflaged code: the service URL, and a readable message: ' ' Each word in that message was a variable used for the deobfuscation process: setup.py Pyobfuscate why, are, you, reading, this, thing, huh I won’t get into details of how Pyobfuscate works, but with patience and expertise, Carlos managed to successfully deobfuscate the code and reveal its true form. He found it intriguing that the obfuscated content was not only present in but also in the previously-readable that was grabbed initially from GitHub, and now from the service. setup.py WindowsDefender.py transfer.sh When bad actors don’t move fast enough, there’s a good chance security researchers like us —and GitHub’s rules about — will ruin their plans. Such is the case of , which was initially hosted on the GitHub repo “joeldev27” when it was used by the PyPI packages and , and rendered inactive soon after. not allowing the platform to be used as a malware CDN WindowsDefender.py pycracker pyobfpremium Since that filename was being used consistently, I did some digging and found that was hosted on a GitHub repo called . When I shared this finding with Carlos, he responded with a sense of wonder: “In the next few hours, a new package will appear on PyPI with an obfuscated . After installation, it will download from that repo you just found a heavily-obfuscated script named which will establish a persistence mechanism and download the info-stealer we investigated previously, also named .” WindowsDefender.py CosasRandoms480 setup.py WindowsDefender.py WindowsDefender.py His prediction turned into reality when the package appeared less than 30 minutes later on PyPI, effectively using “CosasRandoms480” as a malware CDN. We reported it to the PyPI team and it was taken down soon after. pyobfadvance Scientists and philosophers have wondered if . Working as a security researcher certainly feels that way. You’re stuck in a loop of researching, discovering, and reporting, and the same threats keep coming up over and over again. we live in a computer simulation Two days later, a new SylexSquad-credited package was flagged on our system: Same obfuscated . Same URL from executing the same with the same persistence mechanism code and the same execution of the info-stealer in . Everything looked the same, yet the file was and a new script was being summoned from : pydefenderpro. setup.py the same GitHub repo WindowsDefender.py WindowsDefender.py no longer obfuscated transfer.sh “It’s a RAT!” Carlos messaged me on . “And also an info-stealer–” Slack “A RAT Mutant?” I replied, referring to a trend of a type of malware that combines remote access trojans and info-stealers. we’ve been tracking in the wild “Exactly,” Carlos said. OSINT research revealed that the new RAT code was not original, but a copy of of : a copy DiscordRAT : a malicious package gets reported to the PyPI team, and the PyPy team takes it down. Rinse and repeat Of course, a new package, entered the scene soon after. What was different here is that the bad actors migrated to the service instead of GitHub to download , likely due to the “CosasRandoms480” repository being deactivated. pydefenderultra, pastebin.pl WindowsDefender.py We suspect that the readable version of made it easier to confirm that it was breaking . But why did the bad actors decide to deobfuscate the script? Was it too complicated for their simplistic process? WindowsDefender.py GitHub rules The RAT kept mutating. The menu and comments were now translated into Spanish and had additional functionalities. The cycle continued when they uploaded another package, . This time the added functionalities included a keylogger, audio recorder, exfiltration of OS data, and the ability to upload any file from the victim to the attacker's Discord channel. The comments on the code were unusually abundant, which is typically only associated with tutorial code and not a piece of malware. pyjunkerpro “Wait,” Carlos said, thinking out loud, “What if they’re using AI to create new functionalities?” Tools like and provide a good starting point for detecting AI-generated text. However, identifying AI-generated code is still challenging, as there are currently no available tools (that I know of) capable of doing it accurately. Fortunately, humans are still very good at recognizing patterns… GPTZero Copyleaks I quickly opened a ChatGPT tab, and typed a prompt in Spanish, which translated to: “Write Python code for a Discord bot that uploads audio from a remote computer using PyAudio.” The output I got was eerily similar: It seems we were tracking script kiddies who copied code from various sources and then used ChatGPT to add new capabilities. The resulting unique code gave them the confidence to advertise it on or sell it through their own marketplace. And nobody would suspect it wasn’t an original creation. YouTube This raises an intriguing question: what should we call these bad actors? AI-scripted kiddies? Prompt kiddies? I asked ChatGPT, and it said: If an individual is using ChatGPT to add new capabilities to their malware, they may be considered a more advanced type of hacker than a traditional script kiddie. It may be more accurate to refer to them as "hackers" or "AI-assisted hackers" instead. Fascinating. ChatGPT is giving them more status. OSINT with a dash of AI For the sake of experimentation, Carlos wanted to try a prompt to see if the tool would also help us gain further insight into the bad actors’ activities. “I need Python code that can use the Discord API as a bot (using a token). The script should connect to the bot and display the guild information, guild members, guild channels, and message history.” As expected, ChatGPT generated heavily commented code and clear instructions to get started: . So we copied the token that the "AI-assisted hackers" added in and pasted it into our AI-generated Python script. To use this code, replace "your_bot_token_here" with your bot token and run the Python script MicrosoftUpdate.py We ran that code… …and we were in! We gathered information about the members (MEE6, $Demon666, $̷y̷n̷t̷a̷x̷E̷r̷r̷o̷r̷, aitanaxx05 + 4 reps, Esmeralda, SylexNaranjoDomina, and AI Image Generator), channels, and message history. It turns out, they had infected a couple of users already — we identified one IP from Cuba and another one from India. And the OS information was being exfiltrated to channels named after the infected victim’s username: We discovered that we were connected to a bot called “SylexNaranjoDomina'' that had admin privileges. This could enable someone to add members, delete webhooks, or modify existing channels. Someone could easily change the guild name from “The server of Demon666” to “The server of a Script Kiddie” – a fitting description for this type of bad actor, though I believe ChatGPT may frown on that idea. Stay vigilant It's clear from this investigation that the proliferation of MaaS and the use of AI-assisted code has created new opportunities for less technically proficient bad actors. With more users taking advantage of these tools and offerings, there are even more opportunities for malicious packages to infect your build environment. As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, so must our defenses. By staying informed, cautious, and protected, we can be one step ahead against the ever-changing threat of cybercrime.

Bad Actors Are Joining the AI Revolution: Here’s What We’ve Found in the Wild

খারাপ অভিনেতারা এআই বিপ্লবে যোগ দিচ্ছেন: আমরা বন্যের মধ্যে যা পেয়েছি তা এখানে

Schlechte Schauspieler schließen sich der KI-Revolution an: Das haben wir in freier Wildbahn gefunden

Los malos actores se están uniendo a la revolución de la IA: esto es lo que hemos encontrado en la naturaleza

Les mauvais acteurs rejoignent la révolution de l'IA : voici ce que nous avons trouvé dans la nature

बुरे अभिनेता एआई क्रांति में शामिल हो रहे हैं: यहां वह है जो हमने जंगल में पाया है

悪意のある人物が AI 革命に参加: これが私たちが実際に発見したことです

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不良行为者正在加入人工智能革命：这是我们在野外发现的东西

There’s something about the startup scene that inspires drained corporates to leave their cozy, paced lives at big multinational enterprises and pursue the thrill of the unknown. The shiny dream of building the next Silicon Valley unicorn can often be tempting enough to compete with the comfort of a regular, peaceful 9-to-5 with a handful of perks. Indeed, joining a startup could be the next turning point in your career. It’s a great chance to experience a new industry or capacity, have your say in important decisions impacting the whole business strategy of the company, and simply be a part of something great that can potentially change the world. So What’s the Catch? There’s one thing to know about startups before considering working in them: there is always a risk that it won’t work out – particularly if we’re talking about early-stage startups all the way to the seed round. And even if eventually your startup succeeds, it’s important to understand that a large part of this journey may be quite stressful and disheartening. Should you resist the temptation of trying your luck simply because of the danger of failure? Absolutely not. But there is every reason to make a decision of joining a startup with a cold-minded, reasonably critical approach. Now, in this article, we won’t be touching the subject of as it’s a whole different topic to go over – and as an I believe I’m not the one to elaborate on entrepreneurship (at least yet). founding your own startup, employee, However, having worked for an early-stage startup for over a year, I have definitely accumulated some reflections to share. Here are a few key questions I would recommend asking yourself before signing up to work for a startup. 1. Does It Drive Me? Stepping into a startup usually means quickly immersing yourself in a fast-paced environment with countless simultaneous processes that tend to change very quickly. You might have to combine multiple roles at once, rapidly master new skills, and learn about all sorts of matters that you never had to deal with. All of that can be incredibly fun and exciting – as long as you are genuinely passionate about the mission of the startup you’ve chosen and you actually believe that your product is worth all those efforts. In fact, understanding why this work is important to you may be your only chance to stay sane during the darker times when you’ll feel like it’s all going nowhere – and trust me, there will always be such periods, even if eventually you’ll build that unicorn that’ll change the world. To keep your eye on that light at the end of the tunnel, you need to start your journey with a firm belief in its existence. 2. Does It All Make Sense? Getting a solid answer to this question may require you to dig much deeper into the subject – but the time it might save you is very much worth it. Do your research about the field that the company operates in, look through their website, and try to understand what their product is and what similar products are already out there in the market. All these efforts will help you ask the right questions at the interview. Why bother? Unless you are invited to join as a co-founder, you’d want to make sure that the company has a clear vision of its product and its target audience, the markets it’ll focus on, and the monetization model. The only reason why any of these points may remain unclear by the time of your interview is when they are hiring you specifically as a CEO, a Business Development Manager, etc., with the purpose to define these aspects with your help. Stay very much alert for the warning signs that the company’s business strategy is heavily based on assumptions. For example, just because it’s targeting a global problem doesn’t mean it’ll fit into different markets globally. Or just because the founder had a certain experience finding a solution to his personal problem, it doesn’t mean that everyone else out there would need a specific product to solve similar issues. Meticulous market research, critical approach, and pragmatic thinking are extremely important even in the most inspiring startup environment. 3. What Are the Founders Like? It’s quite a common thing for startup founders to be eccentric or relatively hard to deal with. After all, it often takes a certain bit of creativity and/or madness to come up with a truly innovative idea and try to bring it to life. However, instead of romanticizing the popularised “passion” and “courage” as the core qualities of the founders, think of these aspects: 📌 Do these people look like they can handle a business? Do you like their thinking? 📌 Do you trust their experience in the industry and their judgment? Have they done anything remotely similar in the past? 📌 Is there a co-founding team of 2+ people balancing each other out, or is there one solo founder that has full power to change in the company in the flick of a switch? anything 📌 Does it look like you will personally feel comfortable working with them? 4. Will I Have a Share and/or Power? This question may not seem that important when you’re joining a small startup that has little to no revenue and is basically just starting out. However, once you find yourself giving it all to the business that has never been yours, sooner or later you’ll start wondering if your input in its very foundation should be worth its part. That feeling of possessing a certain part in the business might also give you a bit of extra motivation to keep going strong on the downward parts of the journey. As a business owner (even if you only own a couple of percent!), you will most likely feel that going through hardships is more justified. After all, being just an employee on a salary is much easier when you work for a corporate organization. If you’re joining at the earliest stages, it’s worth negotiating to be on the confounding team and have more weight to your word in the consequent strategic decisions. This way, you will less likely end up suffering from someone else’s mistakes that you had no way of preventing. Of course, greater power comes with greater responsibility, so only consider this route if you really want to be at the core of the business. With early-stage startups, it’s often a feasible option – and it’s an opportunity that’s much harder to secure in a big established company. 5. What if It Doesn’t Work Out? However great the mission and vision of the startup you’re joining may seem, the chance of failure is never low. Therefore it’s worth making sure that the journey would be worth it regardless of the result. In other words, even if the startup that employs you never makes a successful exit, you should still be able to leave with valuable takeaways – and no regrets. Some tips to make sure the outcome is positive for you no matter what: ✅ Join a startup with a mission that you believe in and would be proud to look back on; ✅ Choose a role that would give you the most diverse, hands-on experience that you can use in your career later on; ✅ Make sure the startup brings you into the industry that you’d like to stay in, so you can form the right network and learn from industry experts ✅ Do your best to be informed about your sector and the latest tech trends – so you’d be able to make a solid judgment of your startup’s performance ✅ Be passionate – but also be realistic. Last Note Working in a startup can be a bittersweet journey with moments of sky-high thrills and grim disappointments. As an employee, sometimes you will feel proud of the input you are making, and on other days you’d be desperate that you don’t have the power over the things that make the business bounce back or stagnate. Whatever ups and downs you face, what is almost guaranteed is that you will get incredible experience, learn a lot, and gain valuable insights that will take your professional versatility and expertise to a whole new level. The question is, where will your journey take you?

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